The present disclosure is generally related to the field of printing systems, and more particularly to techniques and apparatus for characterizing printer streaks. Printer defects often show up as image quality artifacts such as banding and streaks. As printed media traverses through a printer along a process direction, banding and other periodic defects appear as lines along the cross-process direction, while streaking defects extend along the process direction. The causes for banding and streaking are different, and diagnosing the underlying causes of streaking has thusfar been difficult. Previous work on printer streaking has largely focused on streak detection, which required a design engineer to predefine the attributes for streaks that are of interest. In practice, this technique is limited to detecting a few streak types and more robust diagnosis and generic analysis of a broad range of defects found in printers suffering from streaking is impossible absent a fuller characterization of streaks found on a printed page.